A “critical piece” of Lilac Solutions’ proposed Great Salt Lake lithium project in Utah, USA, will be provided by Australian-South African pairing, JordProxa, which has been contracted to supply downstream conversion process equipment and technology.
Crystallisation, evaporation and drying plant specialist JordProxa, created in 2018 by Australia’s Jord Group and South African-based Proxa, built Australia’s first ammonium sulphate crystalliser for the Kwinana nickel refinery and has since designed and delivered many facilities.
“JordProxa brings deep experience in evaporation and crystallisation technology and their work during our FEL‑3 phase gave us full confidence in their ability to deliver at commercial scale,” Lilac CEO Raef Sully said.
“This is a critical piece of the project and we have the right partner in place.”
Lilac recently picked Hatch to be engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) contractor at Great Salt Lake, where its phase-one blueprint has a 5000 tonnes per annum lithium carbonate plant planned to start in 2028 and a phase-two expansion to 20,000tpa scheduled thereafter.
Lilac claims to have outlined a 1.4-million-tonne lithium carbonate equivalent resource in the northern part of the lake.
Its Gen 5 IX direct lithium extraction technology is earmarked for the project, removing lithium from brine pumped directly from the lake and returning lithium-depleted brine in equal volume, “a non-consumptive process that does not lower lake water levels”.
IX media, the active material at the core of the extraction process, will be produced at Lilac’s manufacturing facility in Fernley, Nevada.
The JordProxa-built facility will convert lithium sulphate eluate produced by Lilac’s IX process into battery-grade lithium carbonate through evaporation, purification and crystallisation.
US commodity trader Traxys earlier this year signed a 10-year take-or-pay offtake agreement to take all of Lilac’s planned Great Salt Lake phase-one output.
